History is so hot right now.
HBO's Rome showed everyone the way, before the floodgates opened and one-time-unmarketable properties like Spartacus: Blood & Sand became the norm, with their blood, raunch and sandals approach to history. Couple that with the reinvigorated fascination with all things regal, and it looks like
Jo Baier's period biopic
Henry of Navarre had a lot of things going for it in the current market. But can it do what few French historical films have done before it and make a big splash on
Blu-ray and
DVD? The film (also known by its French name Henri 4) charts the life of Protestant royal Henry of Navarre from his early life on the fields of battle of a religious war-torn France, through his married life, and his attempts to resist assassination by the hand of pantomimey villainess and eventually become the country's eventually beloved monarch King Henri IV (hence the French title). The film starts in horribly cliched fashion with a visit from Nostradamus to Henry as a child, confirming that the young royal will be a big deal in future - it's not the narrative aspects that are cliched so much as the way the scene is shot and framed by a pregnant, soaring score, then moves to the battlefields, where Henry cuts his teeth as a famed warrior, before his marriage into the court of Catherine de Medici and subsequent trials and attempts on his life. The acting is all fairly impressive, though some occasionally verges on pantomimey territory - but then the script does call for some gleeful abandon in places, which Ulrich Noethen seems to particularly take advantage of as King Charles IX, who is little more than a manipulated, blood-sweating tool of his villainess mother - played with enjoyable menace by Hanelore Hoger. Hoger has enough poise and enough malevolence to convince of her grand puppet-master role, but really few of the characters are anything other than slightly reductive caricatures, each defined somewhat clumsily by one characteristic above all - Charles by his hysterical rage, Hoger by her callous and cold calculation, Henry's wife Marguerite by her sexuality - to the point where they are little but diverting ornaments in the main story. That main story is carried by Henry himself, played in the most part by Julien Boisselier who is charismatic and engaging enough, convincing both of his more barbaric side and his naive inner nature - his is after all a character defined by that dichotomy, and crucially Boisselier's performance carries that weight well. Two and a half hours may feel like a long time, but it's worth remembering that the film was destined at one point to be two longer TV movies, even if that is of little help when the attention starts to wane late on during the slower passages. But credit where credit is due, rather than the apparently hastily edited cinematic version of Carlos (which meshed three episodes together), the edit here is far more accomplished, and while the original intention is clear in certain scenes, it does work as an extended theatrical cut.
The film is surprisingly raunchy, but then it is a pretty fashionable modern approach to reduce historical pieces to animalistic sex-fests, and who am I to argue? It's not quite the boobs and blood splattered madness of the new Spartacus TV shows, but I couldn't help but think of the way pornographic narrative structure frames "set-pieces" with superfluous narrative bridges, of roughly the same length so noone loses interest. Okay, so the bridges here aren't superfluous, but the frequency of the sex scenes led to me playing an initially unintentional game of Predict When Nipples Will Next Appear. It isn't just the sexual appetite of the film that is so modern: the box proclaims that the film's battle-scenes are reminiscent of Ridley Scott, via an early Variety review (which is a little unfair to Baier, who gets a lower billing) and in truth they do look impressive, but each definitely carries the caveat of their obvious financial constraints. They are shot in a particularly immediate way that makes their limited scope of little concern: the cinematography is very accomplished, employing a modern frentic hand-held shooting style that escapes the need for wider, more costly shots, while still keeping to the spirit of war. At times the flourishes become a little over-zealous, and they don't quite distract from the limitations of the budget, but for the most part it's a clever approach to extend the theatricality of a comparatively smaller production. What unfortunately put me off in places was the fact that the film is both dubbed and subtitled, probably due to the multi-national nature of the production, which wouldn't be a hugely important thing, if it wasn't for how ill-matched the voice-work is to match the performance (in most cases it is comically over-blown next to a visibly more reserved physical performance from the actor). The final icing on this quietly quite impressive release is the score by veteran Hans Zimmer and Henry Jackman: it isn't close to Zimmer's finest work, and at time it is very reminiscent of other scores the great composer has turned his hand to, but it is entirely appropriate for the film, and adds an authenticity by proximity that lends more weight to the film's grandiose tones. All in all, it is a French historical film with a reach that extends beyond the traditional limitations of that type of material, thanks to some engaging stylistics, the odd compelling (if a little hyperbolic) acting performance and a sense of exactly what it takes to translate a grand subject to screen without getting bogged down by a vain equation of importance with audience ennui.
Henry of Navarre is available to buy on
Blu-ray and
DVD (on which this review was based).